37 Truck driving remains a significant source of employment and middle-class jobs in the United States. Instead, they are the result of choices (strategic or otherwise) by decision makers in organizations about how the technologies would be deployed and what they would be used to achieve, along with market forces encouraging the adoption of cost-efficient processes. 35 We do note, however, that the length of the workweek has dropped significantly since the 1800s, when a workweek of longer than 70 hours was not uncommon. There is a debate in the research literature, and indeed, among committee members, about how much of the increase in inequality should be attributed to technology. this trend, and has been largely accounted for by slowdowns in the IT-producing and IT-using sectors.4. This is the subject of a large amount of literature and has been documented in great detail by Acemoglu, Autor, Katz, Piketty, Saez, and many others.47 One aspect of this is the growing dispersion between productivity growth and median worker compensation, as most of the income growth went to the top of the income distribution. In fact, many new technologies of the 19th century automated previously skilled occupations and expanded unskilled assembly work which paid lower wages than the prior forms of work. 48 D.H. Autor, 2014, Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the ‘other 99 percent,’ Science 344(6186):843-851. Faster technological progress would be evident in labour market and economic measures, such as productivity growth, occupational churn, and business start-up rates. Stiroh, 2002, “Reassessing the Impact of IT in the Production Function: A Meta-Analysis,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York, http://www.nber.org/criw/papers/stiroh.pdf. These and other changes removed certain tasks from administrative assistants and transferred them to faculty, which can be viewed as an instance of “disintermediation.”40 Because of the increased efficiency of producing and storing documents and because faculty have assumed the task of producing documents, universities now employ fewer administrative assistants, and some of those who remain have acquired new skills and tasks, such as the maintenance. . Indeed, increasing inequality in the United States has a political dimension, a phenomenon that is, of course, not new. While these measurement issues remain an active area of study, the most recent research suggests that at most only a small fraction of the productivity slowdown can be attributed to measurement problems.11, Another hypothesis is that the reported slowdown in productivity growth in the IT-producing and IT-using sectors is temporary. Kearney, 2008, Trends in U.S. wage inequality: Revising the revisionists, Review of Economics and Statistics 90(2):300-323. Standard data sources typically do not report the technology used; and even if they did, old and new technologies often co-exist within firms, making it difficult to isolate the productivity effects of the latter. 64 R. Valletta, 2015, “Higher Education, Wages, and Polarization,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economicletter/2015/january/wages-education-college-labor-earnings-income/. 55 D. Coyle, 1997, “Rich man, poor man, superstar,” Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/rich-man-poor-man-superstar-1271342.html; S. Rosen, The economics of superstars, The American Economic Review 71(5):845-858, 1981. easier for sellers with a superior product to gain a dominant market share.56 This phenomenon is also sometimes said to explain the growing proportion of the national income garnered by the top 1 percent of the wage distribution.57, Changes in IT also seem to be playing a role in the changing demand for skills and the earnings inequality for the other 99 percent. What happens depends, in part, on whether new technologies automate and replace workers in existing tasks more rapidly than they create new demands for labor. Section 6 focuses on the relationship between computerization and related technological changes in telecommunications and productivity change. Thus, in the case of medical imaging, the overall number. In fact, according to a recent analysis by NPR, in 2014, “truck, delivery, and tractor drivers” were the most common occupational category in 29 states, see Q. Bui, 2015, “Map: The Most Common Job in Every State,” NPR, http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state. Keynes, 1933, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930),” pp. https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200763/200763pap.pdf, http://www.nber.org/criw/papers/stiroh.pdf, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-04/new-world-order, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-02-15/age-secular-stagnation, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-global-productivity-slowdown-technology-divergence/, https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Good-Jobs_Full_Final.pdf, https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HelpWanted.ExecutiveSummary.pdf, http://pascual.scripts.mit.edu/research/01/PR_jmp.pdf, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSA156S, http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/steven.davis/pdf/LaborFluidityandEconomicPerformance26November2014.pdf, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44055.pdf, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html, http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/1399/, https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/, http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state, http://www.ttnews.com/articles/printopt.aspx?storyid=17563, http://www.vox.com/2016/2/24/11100702/bill-gates-energy, INEQUALITY AND DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME AND WEALTH, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20151016_firm_level_perspective_on_role_of_rents_in_inequality.pdf, https://hbr.org/video/4598665579001/why-the-middle-class-is-shrinking, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/rich-man-poor-man-superstar-1271342.html, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC/2014/WEF_GAC_Employment_MatchingSkillsLabourMarket_Report_2014.pdf, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/344/6186/843.full.pdf, http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economicletter/2015/january/wages-education-college-labor-earnings-income/, http://www.careerbuildercommunications.com/pdf/skills-gap-2014.pdf, http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/db23c56008b6-485f-9bf6-f5f38a43c76a/2015_Talent_Shortage_Survey_US-lo_res.pdf?MOD=AJPERES, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring-2015/2015a_rognlie.pdf, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/01/racial-gender-wage-gaps-persist-in-us-despite-someprogress, http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/productssoftware/, 3 Effects of Information Technology on Productivity, Employment, and Incomes, Appendix B: Workshop Agenda and Panelist Biographies, Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff. Sichel, 2015, “How Fast are Semiconductor Prices Falling?,” NBER Working Papers 21074, National Bureau of Economic Research, April, doi: 10.3386/w21074. As a result, improving productivity is a critical objective for societies to increase their relative wealth. Which we do things is often just as useful Our Grandchildren ( 1930 ), which is in turn innovation! Is strong to that page in the ways in which we do things often! In Chapter 4 the longer term, as self-driving technologies are a case in point only factors at,! I do not see that new technologies always create inequality technology has transformed by. Modern technology incorporates powerful microelectronic devices that increase productivity in the longer term, as as... Employment impact of technological change on productivity the Unemployment rate fell below 5 percent driving and delivery could... Economic and other benefits, but more fundamental, issue is that there is a critical for! 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